India, June 7 -- The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has issued an advisory to all ecommerce firms to take necessary steps to ensure that their platforms do not engage in deceptive and unfair trade practice which are in the nature of dark patterns.

This comes days after consumer affairs minister Pralhad Joshi asked ecommerce companies to conduct self audits to analyse and remove dark patterns.

"All ecommerce platforms have been advised to conduct self-audits to identify dark patterns, within three months of the issue of the advisory, and take necessary steps to ensure that their platforms are free from such dark patterns," the notice said.

For the uninitiated, dark or deceptive patterns are techniques used by online platfo...